Peter Bradley wasn't a terrorist, but aboard Alaska Airlines
Flight 259 nearly 2 years ago he behaved like one. Suffering from encephalitis,
a condition that can cause delirium, Bradley pulled out a pocketknife, threatened
passengers and assaulted flight attendants who tried to calm him. Then he barged
through the cockpit door.

As
pilots struggled to control the jet, Bradley pushed the captain and fought the
first officer. Passengers tackled him to keep him at bay.

In
the months that followed, crewmembers aboard Flight 259 pushed for more protection
aboard commercial jets. In a letter this spring to the Federal Aviation Administration
and 18 members of Congress, flight attendant Ginny Cavins pleaded for a ban on
knives and steps to fortify cockpit doors "to help prevent future incidents."

The letter ended with a chilling
plea. "We need your help," she wrote. "Changes must be made. It could be you or
your loved one onboard a flight next time an air rage or even a hijacking incident
occurs."

The failure of federal regulators to heed her
warning, or to remedy security breaches aboard hundreds of flights each year,
illustrates a decade-long disregard by U.S. authorities for incidents of in-flight
violence, a USA TODAY investigation shows.

During those
10 years, passengers repeatedly assaulted flight attendants. In more than a dozen
instances, unruly passengers gained access to the cockpit  or tried to,
unsuccessfully. On other occasions, passengers used knives as weapons. Airlines
considered costly changes to the doors, and the FAA urged a "zero tolerance" approach
to handling unruly passengers. But for all the talk, the agency seldom punished
passengers and never ordered airlines to address many of the weaknesses terrorists
exploited Sept. 11, when they hijacked four jets and crashed three into buildings.

"These
were lessons not learned," says Howard Luker, a former FBI agent who worked with
a presidential commission to examine aviation safety and security. "The FAA needed
to take more aggressive approaches to prevent what would happen. The results have
been catastrophic."

Safety advocates say the FAA failed
to act because the agency did not take cases of unruly passengers seriously. No
government watchdog group monitored how such cases were handled, and the agency
seldom viewed incidents as opportunities to learn about the vulnerabilities of
jets in flight. Its attitude toward the issue is underscored by how the agency
responded to reported offenses.

USA TODAY reviewed hundreds
of pages of documents and internal FAA memos, many obtained through the Freedom
of Information Act. The newspaper also collected crime statistics from airport
police, analyzed actions taken in unruly-passenger cases and interviewed dozens
of current and former FAA officials, safety advocates, counterterrorism experts
and others.

The findings:

In hundreds of on-board incidents that drew airport police, the FAA never
opened an investigation or even sent inspectors to interview witnesses or victims.

When
the agency chose to investigate, in most cases officials either took no action
or mailed unruly passengers warning letters.

Despite an FAA pledge to
crack down on unruly passengers 5 years ago, the agency actually was more lenient
with offenders in subsequent years.

Whether a
more aggressive approach would have thwarted the Sept. 11 hijackings is impossible
to gauge. Before the attacks, for instance, standard airline flight procedures
called for pilots to cooperate with hijackers. Fortifying cockpit doors might
have made little difference if pilots willingly opened them.

But
stronger security measures and a more aggressive approach by the FAA might have
created a climate that dissuaded terrorists from even trying to hijack the flights,
some counterterrorism experts say. At a minimum, most agree, toughening onboard
security might have made the terrorists less deadly or effective.

Others
in Congress and the FAA share that view. In the weeks after the hijackings, lawmakers
and agency officials fixed almost every problem flight attendants and safety advocates
had pointed out for years. They banned knives, strengthened cockpit doors and
took other steps to improve onboard security, ostensibly to prevent or deter future
attacks.

"If the FAA had taken the initiative years
ago ... we certainly would have had a much harder target for the terrorists to
have to penetrate," says Reynold Hoover, a former Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms agent and counterterrorism expert.

Two top officials
who agreed to interviews say violent incidents that put flights in peril did not
happen frequently enough to justify ordering major modifications to thousands
of commercial jets. Five other officials refused the newspaper's interview requests.

Other
current and former FAA officials, some of whom requested anonymity for fear of
job reprisals, say many in the agency viewed cases involving unruly passengers
as annoyances, not as chances to address security vulnerabilities.

"I couldn't find anyone who cared," says Steve
Elson, a former FAA special agent who tested and monitored security at some of
the nation's largest airports. "It was just plain indifference, all the way across
the chain of command."

In the case of Flight 259, federal
prosecutors concluded that Bradley was "suffering from a severe mental debilitation
that day ... that made it impossible for him to form the intent" to do harm. Instead
of pushing for a jail sentence, they agreed to allow Bradley to seek medical help.
He now reports to a neurologist every 6 months.

Flight
attendant Cavins, other members of the crew and the airline were less concerned
about Bradley's intent than about the results: a broken cockpit door, a passenger
carrying a knife, a flight crew easily overcome. They made certain the FAA knew
about their security concerns  and the potential for catastrophe. In her
letter to the agency, Cavins even made the connection no one in the FAA had: A
hijacker could take advantage of all the weaknesses unruly passengers had exploited.

But
as the FAA's then-security director Michael Canavan wrote last July in a response
to Cavins' letter, the agency left to the airlines the decision on banning knives.
Strengthening the cockpit door, he wrote, was under discussion by an advisory
committee.

The flight attendants aren't surprised little
was done. "What happened to us should've been big enough for the government to
step in and do something about it," flight attendant Cindy Russell says. "But
to the FAA, it was just an episode that got put in a file somewhere."

Low
priority cases

When Bradley broke into the cockpit
in March 2000, he joined at least a dozen others in the past 3 years who tried
or succeeded in breaking through the flimsy door. Not even the FAA knows precisely
how many made it through. A spokeswoman says the agency doesn't keep track.

But
the succession of incidents involving knives or cockpit breaches drew widespread
publicity and calls for action. Last December, a 46-year-old Texas man forced
an American Airlines jet to land after threatening crewmembers with a 2-inch knife.
Four months earlier, in August 2000, a 19-year-old man kicked a panel loose from
the cockpit door aboard a Southwest Airlines flight; the man was killed by fellow
passengers who tried to subdue him. In March 2000, the same month of the Bradley
incident, an America West jet was diverted after a female passenger pounded on
the cockpit door and shoved and slapped the co-pilot.

Overseas,
similar incidents occurred. In June 1999, a man forced his way into the cockpit
of an All Nippon Airways airliner in Japan and fatally stabbed the pilot. In March
2000, a passenger burst into the cockpit of a charter flight over Spain, grabbed
the controls and yelled "I'm bringing you all down!"

After
Sept. 11 but before airlines fortified doors, a mentally unstable man broke into
the cockpit on an American Airlines flight Oct. 8 from Los Angeles to Chicago.

"How
many does it take?" asks Philip King, an aviation security consultant, former
FBI agent and counterterrorism expert. "If they're kicking doors in and getting
into the cockpit, why didn't we make the cockpit door stronger? ...The public
ought to know that the opportunity was there. The public agencies just didn't
respond."

Typically, flight crews radio for airport
police to meet flights on which an unruly-passenger incident takes place. If the
incident is violent, police usually notify the FBI, which might send an agent
to the gate. FAA inspectors seldom respond to the calls. Instead, they ask airport
police to send them case reports, or they try to coordinate with the FBI in many
of the most serious cases.

FAA officials say they focused
on trying to deter passengers from becoming unruly by persuading federal authorities
to prosecute offenders criminally. In most of the worst cases  including
cockpit breaches or violence involving weapons  offenders have been charged
with violating federal law.

But many U.S. attorneys
declined to prosecute lesser offenses, including assaults. In part, that's because
they didn't consider the cases high priorities.

That
left most cases to the FAA, which has the power to assess fines as high as $25,000
against offenders. Agency workers are in a position to meet each flight and take
statements from witnesses and crewmembers, and they can examine each case with
an eye toward preventing future incidents.

Safety advocates
say the FAA did neither because it viewed the cases as low priorities. A USA TODAY
analysis of 1,519 unruly-passenger cases, opened and closed from 1990 through
2000, shows the agency's approach:

The FAA collected
fines from unruly passengers in 508 cases, or a third of the time.

In
another third of the cases, the federal agency either sent a warning letter, was
unable to locate the offender, or determined that a fine was "uncollectable."

The
agency did nothing in 449 cases, or 30%.

"It's
beyond amazing. It's criminal," says Pat Friend, president of the Association
of Flight Attendants. The union, which represents 50,000 crewmembers, has criticized
the FAA repeatedly for failing to take in-flight violence issues seriously. "The
truth is, they didn't act," Friend says. "And they acted as though they didn't
care."

'Zero tolerance' in action

Even as the number of incidents jumped, the FAA's enforcement action varied little.
In 1996, the agency issued its only official statement to airlines regarding unruly
passengers. The advisory did not require action but provided guidance about how
airlines should act. It stressed the need for "zero tolerance" when unruly passengers
interfered with flight crews.

A month after issuing
the circular, Linda Hall Daschle, then FAA's acting administrator, reiterated
the agency's stance. "We will not tolerate any interference with the vital safety
functions performed by crewmembers," she said.

Instead
of cracking down, however, the agency went easier on unruly passengers during
the 4 full years after the "zero tolerance" advisory was issued. Regulators took
action more often than in 1996, but that action usually consisted of issuing a
warning letter  a notice that carries no legal or financial penalty.

In
fact, the percentage of offenders who paid fines decreased from the 1996 level.

An
FAA deputy associate administrator, Margaret Gilligan, says she cannot recall
the agency's issuing special instructions to its inspectors to crack down on offenders.
She says "zero tolerance" meant simply that the agency would handle each case
based on the evidence. "I don't know what the percentage (of passengers fined)
has to do with it," she says.

Understanding why the
FAA chose to punish some offenders but not others is difficult, even for the FAA.
The agency's record-keeping procedures call for case files to be destroyed within
months in cases in which offenders are not fined. Consequently, trying to determine
whether alleged offenders should have been punished is impossible.

Internal
FAA reports obtained by USA TODAY, however, raise questions about how seriously
agency officials viewed violent outbursts, including those in which pilots were
disturbed or drawn from the cockpit.

Among the cases
federal prosecutors did not pursue:

On May 27,
1997, an American Airlines passenger "beat on the cockpit door and harassed flight
attendants and passengers. He then sexually harassed a female flight attendant
by grabbing her buttocks," one report says. His punishment: a warning letter.

On
Nov. 27, 1997, during a Delta Air Lines flight from New York to Los Angeles, a
male passenger "grabbed a female flight attendant's hand three times and made
sexual advances towards her. The passenger... would not let the female flight
attendant continue with her duties." As a result, the report says, the flight
engineer "left the cockpit twice in an effort to get the passenger to stop his
behavior." The passenger's punishment: a warning letter.

On Dec. 17, 1997,
on United Airlines Flight 876 from Japan to Los Angeles, a U.S. Navy serviceman
"choked a flight attendant" and "was restrained by three other servicemen," the
report says. His punishment: a warning letter.

$100
fines

Cases in which fines were assessed raise
similar questions about the agency's willingness to crack down on offenders.

In
one case in March 1997, a man aboard KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Flight 601 began
bothering passengers about 2 hours into an overseas flight and had to be warned
by the captain. The passenger was asked to stay seated. Six hours later, the report
says, the passenger "became violent and was wrestled to the floor by members of
the flight crew and passengers and subsequently handcuffed to a seat in the rear
of the aircraft. One flight attendant was elbowed in the stomach during this altercation."
More than a year later, the man paid a fine to the FAA. His payment: $100.

"At
no time did I ever see the FAA ever really come down hard on these unruly passengers,"
says John Otto, former acting director of the FBI, who retired as Delta Air Line's
security director in 1999.

In the cases cited by USA
TODAY, the FAA's deputy chief counsel, James Whitlow, says he "can't possibly"
address whether the punishment was appropriate without examining the case files
 all of which have been destroyed, in keeping with agency policy.

He
says many cases might have been closed quickly with no action taken because inspectors
lacked enough evidence that passengers did anything wrong. That would make fining
passengers difficult, he says, and might explain why passengers weren't fined
more often.

But like FAA official Gilligan, the agency's
legal department appears to put little importance on punishment rates. Whitlow
says he does not know what percentage of cases ended with fines paid. Asked whether
he has a general idea, he says, "not really." The prosecution rate, he argues,
illustrates little.

"That doesn't mean we didn't care
enough to do any more," he says. "You know why I'm comfortable with it? Because
I know the people who made the decisions."

Crucial
connections

No matter how such cases were handled,
current and former FAA officials say no one within the agency made crucial connections
that might have prompted action to fortify jets before Sept. 11.

Some
of the incidents showed that irate passengers were able to overpower flight attendants.
They also showed that a single passenger  sometimes drunk, sometimes ill
 could succeed at breaking through the cockpit door. If an irate passenger
could gain access to the cockpit, what about a hijacker?

"Everybody
assumed that hijacking was over. We hadn't had one here in a decade," says a current
FAA official with knowledge of security planning. "Even when we had discussions
about hijacking, someone would say, 'Why are we talking about this at all? Hijackings
never happen.' "

The airlines didn't seem particularly
troubled either. All could have banned knives. All could have offered self-defense
training to flight attendants. But as Friend, president of the flight attendants
union, recalls, only a handful took even small steps, such as equipping jets with
"flex cuffs"  plastic handcuffs used to restrain unruly passengers.

For
Alaska Airlines, the Bradley incident served as "a wake-up call for us, a reality
check," spokesman Jack Evans says. He says officials met with the FAA and asked
to put a bar over the cockpit door. Other airlines considered similar steps. "We
were basically told the (regulations) don't allow it, " Alaska's Evans says.

As
a consequence, no U.S. carrier had begun to retrofit planes before Sept. 11. "We've
continued to look to the FAA to tell us what we needed to do with our cockpit
doors," explains Michael Wascom, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association,
a trade group representing the nation's largest airlines.

As
for banning knives, Wascom says airlines "were in compliance with FAA regulations.
The FAA sets all of this. The airlines don't."

Representatives
of the nation's largest pilots union, the Air Line Pilots Association, say their
members have sought hardened doors for more than a quarter-century. But before
Sept. 11, they concede, they were more concerned about how pilots would escape
from a fortified cockpit than they were about keeping passengers out.

So
was the FAA, Gilligan says. Before Sept. 11, the agency had concluded that fortifying
cockpit doors would have made jets less safe, she says. If the jet rapidly decompressed,
a fortified door might not blow out to allow pilots to escape the cockpit. If
pilots became incapacitated, a hardened door might prevent crewmembers from getting
in to try to fly the jet.

One pilots union member who
was part of an FAA advisory committee discussing the door issue even lauded the
agency's approach. "I felt the FAA acted as quickly as necessary," says Peter
Reiss, a pilot.

That's not how others saw it. When the
vulnerability of the doors became clear in the 1990s, some safety advocates suggest
the agency should have ordered airlines to temporarily barricade the cockpits
until it decided how to retrofit planes. That's what happened in the weeks after
Sept. 11.

And though discussions about hardening the
cockpit door were underway, banning knives and training flight attendants to defend
themselves weren't on the FAA's agenda, flight attendant union president Friend
says. The union tried to push the FAA by petitioning last year for rules to force
airlines to train crewmembers. A union spokeswoman says the organization has yet
to hear back.

"You can blame the airlines," Friend says,
"but it was the FAA that let them get away with it. They're the ones who have
the responsibility. But instead, they allowed the industry to tell them what they
wanted to do."

One of the reasons the agency might not
have acted: None of the watchdog groups that typically monitor aviation safety
and security  the National Transportation Safety Board, the General Accounting
Office and the Department of Transportation's inspector general  considered
unruly passengers within their purview. Consequently, none pressured the FAA to
toughen security.

"I felt all along that the NTSB ought
to have jurisdiction overlooking security as well as safety," says Jim Hall, the
former NTSB chairman. "But historically, we have never done it, and our statute
is not clear that we have that responsibility. To try to take on that added responsibility
without a clear direction from Congress would have been ridiculous."

'Nobody
would listen'

Even the FAA's harshest critics concede
that no one could have foreseen the events of Sept. 11. Nevertheless, absent the
attacks, one top FAA security official says the unruly-passenger issue was a catastrophe
waiting to happen.

"These were things that could've
brought planes down for the last decade," says the official, among those who was
told not to comment by superiors.

Safety advocates agree.
They have been troubled by the FAA's approach to the issue since the mid-1990s.
"We've been saying that no one would do anything until a plane crashed," says
Mike Sheffer, who launched The SkyRage Foundation after his wife, flight attendant
Renee Sheffer, was hurt in 1997 by an unruly passenger.

"Now,
it's closing the barn door after the cows have left," he says. "I just wish someone
had listened when we still had a chance."

In
the days after Sept. 11, Russell couldn't help making the comparison between the
man who stormed the cockpit of the Alaska flight and the hijackers.

"It
was like a part of me felt guilty  like I should've stood up and talked
louder," she says. "The only difference between the hijackings and what happened
to us was that it was just one crazy man aboard our flight, not four people.

"To
me, what happened to us should have been a red flag. But nobody would listen."

Barbara
Hansen, Paul Overberg and William Risser contributed to this story